In 2018, 340 shootings occured in the United States. 373 people were killed and 1347 people were injured. Thankfully, this meant that only 21.7 percent of shooting victims lost their lives. The city that was impacted the most, meaning it had the most shootings, was Chicago, while the most impacted states were California, Illinois.
Data source:
Gun Violence Archive
Below is a table showing the 10 states that had the highest number of shootings in 2018, along with additional information regarding the number of victims of those shootings.
| State | Shooting_Number | People_Killed | People_Injured | Total_Victims |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| California | 35 | 50 | 136 | 186 |
| Illinois | 35 | 21 | 150 | 171 |
| Florida | 30 | 48 | 132 | 180 |
| Pennsylvania | 19 | 35 | 63 | 98 |
| Tennessee | 18 | 19 | 68 | 87 |
| Texas | 16 | 29 | 62 | 91 |
| Alabama | 14 | 12 | 55 | 67 |
| Missouri | 14 | 12 | 52 | 64 |
| Louisiana | 13 | 15 | 50 | 65 |
| New York | 13 | 5 | 53 | 58 |
Note: NA values indicate zero shootings
From this map, it is clear that the states with the highest number of shootings in 2018 were California, Illinois, and Florida. It is also interesting to note that there were many states that had zero shootings, all of them being northern states. Further research could be done to investigate what gun laws and other state characteristics made northern states less likely to experience shootings.
A choropleth map is perfect for answering my research question because the gradiation in the intensity of color makes states with the highest shooting counts immidiately stand out. The color red is perfect for this map as well because red is associated with blood and violence, and thus is especially appropriate in this context.
The following chart compares the three states and their shooting, casualty, and total victim counts
The answer to this question clearly depends on what factor you consider most closely related to danger. If the frequency of shootings in general is what concerns you, then California and Illinois would be the most dangerous states. However, if instead you cared more about the total number of victims, California would be the one. Finally, if the most important factor for you is the number of people killed, then again, California would be the one to avoid.
Overall, all three states are similarly dangerous, but Florida never quite reaches the most dangerous status in any of the categories, althought it does score second on the kill and victim count, beating Illinois.
I chose this dodged bar graph in order to easily compare different key statistics between the three states. When looking at the killed_total section, you can immidiately tell that California had the most people killed in 2018. And by looking at the shooting_number section, you gain an interesting insight that California and Illinois had the same number of shootings. But then when you glance at the victim_total, you realize that despite Illinois’ great number of shootings, it has a much smaller number of victims that both of its rival states.
The purpose of this map is to see the geolocation of individual shootings in the United States, noticing a pattern for which regions have a higher density of shootings. Circle size differences are exxagerated for the purpose of clearly identifying the most deadly shootings.
This map makes it extremely easy to identify the deadliest individual shootings. It is clear that the shooting that resulted in the most deaths, the largest red dot, is located in Pompano Beach, Florida and had 17 deaths. Following in magnitude is the Thousand Oaks shooting in California, which resulted in 13 deaths. It is also immidiately clear that most of America’s shootings occur in the eastern part of the United States and California.
On February 14, 2018, the deadliest shooting of 2018 occured in 5901 Pine Island Rd, Pompano Beach (Parkland), Florida. Nikolas Cruz (19), opened fire at his former high school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. He killed 17 people and injured 17 more, resulting in the grand total of 34 victims.
Data related to mass shootings reveals that more shootings happen on the east coast and in the state of California than anywhere else in the United States. This data can be used for good by encouraging more policing in the cities that have already had shootings(and thus are more likely to have more future shootings). More policing would hopefully lower the amount of potential shootings. But as O’neil stressed, this kind of thinking can create feedback loops with unexpected and unwanted consequences. Two bad things can happen. One, encouraging harsher policing in those regions might spark more hatred towards the police and instead cause even more shootings, for example those started by agression towards policemen and ending in a shooting between the police and the suspect(s). Another potential solution could be to send best policemen into these regions, meaning that the less trained policemen will be the only ones remaining in the current shooting-free areas, potentially causing a breakout of shootings in a new area.